Sometimes I attempt to write about tech, culture or fashion, but the disastrous date blogs remain the most popular.
Friends regularly contribute – whatever they say may be unwittingly used for material. One friend recently forwarded a study, which found men like the idea of intelligent women on paper, but not so much on a date. India Knight ran with this and discussed many men’s chief hobby – mansplaining, in her Sunday Times column. This is one of the reasons women should never date down: if he discovers you’re equally smart/more intelligent, his mansplaining will lead to a low-maintenance weekend.
Mark sent a link to a recent edition of Saturday’s Times. ‘Sex and the 21st century office would be great to discuss over a couple of glasses of wine,’ he said. He’s right. Kim Elsesser, academic, former hedge-fund manager and now author of Sex and the Office has a theory: our inability to be comfortable around colleagues of the opposite sex is stopping women from gaining the contacts and creating the networks they need to get promoted.
In a city known for its tolerance, liberalism and equality, I was surprised to discover men and women naturally separating into same-sex groups at parties when I first arrived in Amsterdam. What’s more, the Dutch girlfriend of Hot Danish’s best friend once asked if HD was okay with my male friendships (frankly, he preferred their company to my girlfriends’).
So, here are 5 reasons every girl should have male friends in her life:
- They give valuable career advice, from how to negotiate a pay rise to how to give a speech to remember simply because men are generally more practiced at being outspoken and they belong to the boys’ network
- They’ll tell you when to stop wasting your time
- They’ll make you laugh over an abnormal situation (and make you feel normal again)
- When you’re down, they’ll build you up with kindness and a dash of common sense
- They’ll make you realise how much we have in common with the opposite sex. (If some people think I’m a runaway bride, loyal friend Tom has been accused of not being able to commit.)
